


Hiraeth

by Silvereye



Category: This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Genre: F/F, Homesickness, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29371854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvereye/pseuds/Silvereye
Summary: "There are thirty men buried in this hill," Red says."At the same time?"Red nods."Must have been quite a battle."Red and Blue talk about what to do afterwards.
Relationships: Blue/Red (This is How You Lose the Time War)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Hiraeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiraMira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMira/gifts).



Blue finds Red a few millenia upstream. The strand is not central enough to warrant constant monitoring, nor so rare that the Agency and the Garden would dearly want it for their purposes. It is as safe as any time can be.

Red is sitting on a hill at the edge of the forest, looking south. It's near noon, the sun bright on her face. There's something distant in her gaze. Blue sits by her, an easy handspan away, and looks south as well. There are trees, there is grass. The sky here is not as unconstrained as it would be in the southern steppe, but it is wide and bright enough. Blue thinks she can see a distant rider against it. They are late enough for steppe nomads, even if much too early for the Mongols, and neither of them needed to visit the other nomads.

"There are thirty men buried in this hill," Red says.

"At the same time?"

Red nods.

"Must have been quite a battle." The planet is sparsely populated at this moment. Plagues are rarer than wars, and wars are so small that thirty dead at the same time is uncommon.

Red nods and says: "It was still futile. This is one of the strands where forest dwellers defeat the steppe people."

Blue hums and waits.

"I think," Red says, the words unfurling like the first two leaves of a sprouting seed, and then falters. She does not do it often. Blue rests her hand between them, palm up. After a moment Red takes it, her hand thinner and colder than Blue's, and continues: "Sometimes I think we should try to see if there are others who would want to defect."

"It would be dangerous." They finally have a place of their own, apart and between the massive braids of the Agency and Garden. Red calls their clandestine future Violet, after the flower and the melange of their use-names; Blue has been working on a pun of her own, but has not yet thought of a clever enough one. Balancing this strand depends equally on the ouroboros nature of them (Garden patience melded to Agency precision melded to Garden again) and plain old security through secrecy. Difficult to advertise, that.

"I know," Red says, and then: "I suppose I feel sorry for them."

Blue forgets, sometimes, how young Red is. Or perhaps it's less a factor of age and more a consequence of their respective upbringings. Red believes in the kind of cosmic equity one gets in a programmed world: _if I am happy, everyone should be_. Blue is more used to the fierce certainty of growing things: _what is mine, I keep_.

"Do you ever miss them?" Red asks.

"Sometimes," Blue says and trusts Red to hear the nuances. She did not quite fit in the Garden, the way Red did not quite fit in the Agency, but there's a kind of comfort in the familiarity of home. She did not leave behind anyone she could not bear to be parted from, but hearts are still tricky to replant. They have a habit of longing.

"Me too," Red says. "Even though they would have killed me." She edges closer, rests her head on Blue's shoulder. Blue kisses the corner of Red's forehead that she can reach.

"Let's leave a message," Blue finally says when the sun is starting to tilt westwards. "Something small. Not a set of directions towards Violet. Maybe we should not even mention ourselves. Garden misses me and you are notorious."

"A seed?" Red says, half-smiling, in a language where the word means both a grain and a cryptographic breach.

Blue shrugs with her free shoulder. "Yes. And then we hope someone will read it."

Red nods. "I would like that."


End file.
